In order to increase rotation of an arrow in flight, vanes have been attached at helical and/or offset orientations to the arrow shaft. However, due to decreased spacing between the vanes, the helical and offset mounted vanes often interfere with the arrow rest of the bow when the arrow is being shot. This interference is known to cause the arrow to change direction after it is shot and can result in the arrow wobbling during flight, which can result in poor target accuracy and shorter flight distance. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,867,426 to Mellick.
Additionally, helically oriented and off-set oriented vanes present a similar problem when shot down a rigid, planarcrossbow arrow track. The rigid, planar track, will not physically allow the passage of these helically oriented and off-set oriented vanes as the vanes interfere with the planar nature of the crossbow arrow track which is a machined or molded track in which the arrow vane is slipped and the arrow can miss its' target.
Various types of arrow vanes have been proposed over the years to deal with these problems. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,142,896 to Simo and U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0159256 to Simo et al.
However, these vanes are generally flat planar vanes with little or no curved aerodynamic surface. These previous vanes are planar and have molded “kickers” that are supposed to serve as an airfoil and induce longitudinal spin-stabilization. The “airfoil” portion of these flat, planar vanes is in the aft end. The “kicker” used in these references is a very low-efficiency protuberance. It relies on aerodynamic drag to induce spin-stabilization, slowing the arrow's speeds.
However, these products have not been commercially successful due to the planar surface. During flight, these planar vanes with molded kickers and “airfoil” shapes flex and then flutter uncontrollably during flight due to the great amount of turbulent airflow over their surfaces. These modified vanes, which increase aerodynamic drag exponentially, slow the arrow and result in less than desirable results.
The subject inventor patented U.S. Pat. No. 6,695,727, which included an arrow vane device that requires a pre-assembled vane arrangement on an arrow shaft to be screwably attached to shaft. The problem here is that most arrows do not allow for a separate attachment shaft with vane. So this prior art would not be useful to be used with most existing arrows.
This patent described the use of molded vanes that had a strictly planar foot section. These airfoil equipped vanes were manufactured by a molding process. Unlike the present invention that utilizes any commercially available arrow vane (planar) to form a three-dimensional airfoil by physically wrapping the foot section around the arrow shaft causing the vane to mold itself into a three-dimensional airfoil.
Thus, there exists the need for solutions to the problems addressed in the prior art.